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Tor is a software project that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying
web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other
obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual
needs and tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.

Install Tor and privoxy in Ubuntu

sudo aptitude install tor privoxy

This will complete the installation.

GUI Tools Available for Tor

Currently we have the following TOR GUI Applications

Vidalia

Vidalia is a cross-platform controller GUI for the Tor software, built using the Qt framework. Using Vidalia, you can start and stop the Tor software, view its status at a glance, and monitor bandwidth usage. Vidalia also makes it easy to contribute to the Tor network by helping you set up and manage your own relay.

Torbutton

Torbutton is a 1-click way for Firefox users to enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. It adds a panel to the statusbar that says "Tor Enabled" (in green) or "Tor Disabled" (in red). The user may click on the panel to toggle the status. If the user (or some other extension) changes the proxy settings, the change is automatically reflected in the statusbar.

Some users may prefer a toolbar button instead of a statusbar panel. Such a button is included, and one adds it to the toolbar by right-clicking on the desired toolbar, selecting "Customize...", and then dragging the Torbutton icon onto the toolbar. There is an option in the preferences to hide the statusbar panel (Tools->Extensions, select Torbutton, and click on Preferences).

Newer Firefoxes have the ability to send DNS resolves through the socks proxy, and Torbutton will make use of this feature if it is available in your version of Firefox.

TorK

TorK is a powerful anonymity manager for the KDE Desktop on Linux and Unix systems. It first helps you
to install, configure and use Tor. It then reduces the task of anonymizing most applications to a single-click, including Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Pidgin, Kopete, SSH, and IRC. For advanced users TorK

provides detailed network information, and more, in an accessible manner.
If you wish to run TorK locally, please install the tor and privoxy packages.

I really want to follow your work here. I’m confused though. I had added the line and sudo aptitude update, before I tried to install the packages. That’s when I got the pgp errors. Also, the Tor button for firefox, is that what you are doing here? Sorry. Thanks for the help.

The information in this tutorial is incomplete. Sure, it can install Tor and privoxy, however it does not tell you what needs to be edited in the /etc/privoxy/config file for it to work. I am also unsure if a stock /etc/tor/torrc will work right off the bat.

Vidalia by default will work from a torrc inside of ~/.vidalia/torrc however i belieive it generates this from the existing /etc/tor/torrc

I’m also thinking that installing vidalia from source is better. under hardy to get vidalia compiled from the original vidalia tar.gz http://vidalia-project.net:8001/vidalia/vidalia-0.1.3.tar.gz it requires the following hardy packages to do so. i also believe that a released version of Tor from the noreply.org site is better than something at launchpad.net.

it is also necessary to use Torbutton (with use privoxy checked) for Tor to work. (the latest dev release has the most features) there is one line that must be added from the original privoxy package config file (you must use privoxy with tor or your dns requests will still be sent to your ISP) however i cannot get vidalia (either from the repos, latest stable, or svn snapshot) to work. if you feel ok running Tor from command line, or better yet “RunAsDaemon 1” in the /etc/tor/torrc config file, i think thats better (not having to rely on vidalia). however one thing i have not figured out how to do, is to change identities from command line. any help here?

after the installation of privoxy you must stop it and open the file config in /etc/privoxy and then add this line “forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .” without quote.
then restart privoxy: sudo privoxy

It is not mentioned that there are well know bug with vidalia gui and Hardy (Read the Tor documentation about it) which in most cases freeze and is not respond. Sometimes also takes 100% of CPU cycles and system crash.

@xboxhacker.net is right. Tor developers and community strongly suggest to download packages from noreply mirror.

noreply.org is the ideal place for Tor and Privoxy debs. If you go to the official Vidalia page you can check out the latest development snapshot using subversion. Be sure the subversion package as well as the ones listed above are installed. after svn checkout, compile inside of ~/vidalia using ‘cmake . && make ; sudo make install’ Do not run vidalia with tor running! sudo /etc/init.d/tor stop. then sudo edit /etc/tor/torrc and add ‘RunAsDaemon 0’ (without the ‘) and also user edit ~/.vidalia/torrc and add the same (starting Tor within vidalia uses a seperate config). Vidalia will complain if Tor is running under default noreply.org (OR offical ubuntu debs) configuration, once those edits in place, and verified Tor is not running, start vidalia, go into preferences and uncheck the option to start Tor automatically. After that you may play with stop/start/new identity (change ip address on demand), and with those edits vidalia will not hang on start. Use torbutton only, remove any live bookmarks, they can leak information, latest firefox can leak timezone. be sure to follow /etc/privoxy/config configuration to forward socks4a on localhost. sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy force-reload && sudo /etc/init.d/priovxy restart.

support a free internet, donate to eff.org who protects our rights in this country including the legal use of Tor, support america’s covert black ops programs, support the victims of crime, and do not use Tor for illegal purposes.

Tor/privoxy/vidalia information verified as working in Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex (currently ubuntu repo for tor/privoxy)

I’ve noticed the same problem as Rykel above. Under Intrepid, Vidalia seems to get stuck somewhere waiting for tor to “say something”. I can run tor just fine by manually playing with the init scripts, so Vidalia isn’t exactly a necessity. It’s sure nice to be able to alter tor settings on the fly, though . . .

None one of the instructions to install anything works for me. Just shows why Linux is not popular. A pity because it is at heart far better than Windows! Why on earth can’t you have the equivalent of a “exe” file which installs in seconds, instead of all this messing about with change this add this then do this, then…. I can’t fathom out anything. Why on earth cannot Linux/Ubuntu people realise than we are not all PhDs in computers. Why not a simpler process? I do not understand a word of the above – not one word – just tell me:

download x
Install y by pressing button z
just like windows

I have linux 10.04 or whatver it is, something Lynx. I mean even if windows can get things to install things easily then surely the Linux people can. Aaaaaaaaaaah!